A Farewell to Trial-and-Error Method

25.08.2008

New version of The Bat! email program has Quick Templates preview option.

Quick Templates help you save your working time by inserting specially prepared text fragments. If you are duty bound to answer similar questions or send out stereotyped letters, then you'll highly appreciate this instrument. With Quick Templates it is possible to attach files, vCards or automatically change message settings. You don't even need to take your fingers from the keyboard – a marvelous set of macros is available for Quick Templates as well as for the simple ones.

In The Bat! 4.0.28 we significantly enhanced the work with Quick Templates. The major improvement is the option of previewing the result of the template's work. Let's concentrate on this particular innovation.

In order to see what letter is generated as a result of applying one quick template or another, in previous versions you needed to create such letter using the template and to compare it with your expectations. The desired effect was hard to achieve from the first attempt, and the process of template creation took longer than you planned. The results of unsuccessful attempts were thrown into trash folder. Naturally, this state of things was a real waste of time and nerves.

In The Bat! 4.0.28 we implemented a preview mechanism that will deliver our users from these tiresome operations once and for all. The advantage of the new function is evident – now users can check the template's action in real-time mode. Sometimes it's difficult to realize what macro suits best for one purpose or another. Just enter the Preview tab and see if the chosen macro answers your purpose. If not, you can immediately replace it with a more suitable macro without creating unnecessary letters.

You want to get an obvious case of how the template that is being created handles one letter or another and what output you receive? No problem! In the same preview window there is a special area with the following inscription: "Drag and drop a text (original) message here". Drag and drop your letter to this area and you will see the template's processing result. For example, in this way you can check the quotation accuracy in the reply letter that a template generates or view the names of all the attached files.

We wrote a user manual dedicated to the Quick Templates new mechanism. We hope that you are going to like working with the new Quick Templates.